Search This Blog

McMaster C1939

Take a look at this video: McMaster C1939. Now picture the fact that Cootes Drive, then known as Highway 8D (Dundas Diversion) was already built (opened in 1937) as a divided highway. A truly modern highway that even today never runs at capacity.

The highway was built and paid for by the Provincial Department of Highways under Hamilton's own Thomas B. McQuesten, Minister of Highways at the time.

Dundas town council was adamant they did not expect to pay for the roadway's connecting links to Dundas, just as Hamilton refused to pay for the intersection with highway 8 (Main Street).

Why was it built here, and at this time? Well, it was likely a small demonstration of the future, a tactic employed by McQuesten to give people a taste of, and time to get used to, what was to come: in this case, the Queen Elizabeth Highway (QEW) being constructed as a limited access divided highway.

Filling in the Dundas marsh with soil taken from the hillside west and north of the McMaster campus made the road possible, with its modern grading and engineered long curves. Modernity over marshes.

It would be another 3 decades until McMaster filled in Coldspring Valley and Binkley's Pond to create massive cheap parking, further eroding the beautiful natural habitat of the Cootes Paradise/Dundas Marsh region.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A lovely butterfly garden is the perfect setting for this annual speaker series.
August 4, 2018, Guest speaker: Doreen Nicoll
You cannot have Monarch Butterflies without milkweed. Doreen Nicoll has recently become a heroine for monarch butterflies, by insisting on her rights to grow milkweed in her naturalized garden in Burlington.

Doreen Nicoll has long understood that garden with nature and not against her is the best thing for our planet. She also knows that native plants are great at attracting butterflies and bees of all species.

Doreen will be the first presenter in the Summer Series at the Urquhart Butterfly Garden and her topic will be Monarchs and Their Milkweed and naturalized gardening. She has wealth of information and is fun as well!

The session will begin at 11 am Saturday on August 4 and last approximately one hour. Please bring a chair.

If it rains the session will be cancelled.

For more information about the Urquhart Butterfly Garden please visit urquhartbutterfly.c…

We're going on a hike to introduce McMaster students (and any other interested participants) to this former RBG Coldspring Valley Nature Sanctuary and coldwater creek floodplain - currently a parking lot - to examine the past, present and future of this place that is undergoing an important ecological transformation.
Tour Leaders Dan Coleman (English Professor and author of Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place)Randy Kay (Restore Cootes)Judy Major-Girardin (School of the Arts)